Luke 23:17, the Passover custom that explains itself
Luke 23:17 is missing from some modern Bibles because critical editions follow the text without the feast custom; the Byzantine text includes that explanation. The APB retains it in brackets.
The APB text at this verse
The manuscripts, editions, and versions
The committee record at this verse
The APB is translated by a committee of language models that works blind. The translators are never told they are translating the Bible, never given a book name or a verse number, and never shown the witnesses listed above. Where the manuscripts disagree, the choice between readings is made before translation by the same kind of translator working the same way: it sees the competing readings and the witnesses by age and class, but never a reference or a manuscript name. There are 14,877 such places. For APB 4.0 every one was decided again in October 2026. GPT-6.1 Sol decided every one first. Claude Fable 5.1, from another model family, decided 2,483 of them second, including every place where the first translator left the base text. A departure from the base text needs both translators to agree and the first to be at least 0.8 confident. There is no third translator, so the base text stands when the two disagree. APB 4.0 is translated over those decisions. Whatever was done at this verse was done on the language and the evidence alone, and the record is public.
Luke 23:17: set in brackets as a disputed passage, wording kept.
“The base text reads ἀπολύσω. The copies also carry ἀπολύσω 17 Ἀνάγκην δέ εἶχεν ἀπολύειν αὐτοῖς κατὰ ἑορτὴν ἕνα. [later majority tradition]; the committee kept the base text. The supplied evidence strongly supports the default without requiring any proposed source for the addition.”
“This passage is not in the earliest copies of the text. The committee judged it a later addition and keeps it in brackets rather than removing it. The note about the feast custom is an explanatory addition. The early text goes directly to the crowd's cry.”
The committee's decision for APB 4.0 keeps Luke 23:17 in brackets as a disputed passage, with its wording retained. Its note states: "The committee judged it a later addition and keeps it in brackets rather than removing it." GPT-6.1 Sol (OpenAI) was the first translator; Claude Fable 5.1 (Anthropic) was the second translator. The committee's printed text reads: "[Now he was required to release one to them at the festival.]"
The argument for each reading
If borrowed from Mark
The case for omitting the explanation rests on the shorter text represented by Westcott-Hort (1881). This edition joins verse 16 directly to verse 18: the offer to release Jesus leads straight to the crowd's cry. The explanation of the feast custom appears in later manuscripts, and its position varies; some place it after verse 19. That movement supports the possibility that an explanatory addition entered the narrative. Mark and Matthew provide a possible source for the explanation, though the shorter reading does not require a conclusion about where the added wording came from.
If Luke wrote it
The case for including the explanation rests on its presence in the Byzantine text, represented by Robinson-Pierpont Byzantine Textform (2005). The sentence states that one person had to be released to the people at the feast. It gives the crowd's demand an explicit setting within Luke's account. If Luke wrote it, omitting it removes his explanation of the custom. Its explanatory role makes the longer reading coherent, although coherence alone cannot settle whether the sentence belonged to Luke's text or entered during transmission.
The remaining uncertainty concerns whether Luke included the explanation and, if it was added later, where it came from. The resemblance to the custom explained in Mark and Matthew leaves borrowing possible without establishing it. The variant changes whether Luke explicitly states the release custom. The offer to release Jesus and the crowd's cry remain part of the account in either reading.
Related entries
Witness readings for critical editions are quoted from the SBLGNT apparatus (CC BY 4.0); Hebrew text from the Westminster Leningrad Codex (Open Scriptures Hebrew Bible). Readings of ancient manuscripts and versions are cited from the sources linked above.